INTERVIEW: Niki Usbay

Niki Usbay: TV Producer, Triple Threat TV

Believe it or not, it’s never too early to gain experience for your dream job. In fact, sometimes, the younger you are, the more opportunities surround you. When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to make big Hollywood Movies. I studied hard to get in to Rochester Institute of Technology, and once accepted, signed up for the peer mentor program. I didn’t realize it then, but choosing to join that program, led me to make friends with a bunch of older people in my school who taught me things I could never learn in classes. As it turns out, the seniors in my school that I met through that program took me in and let me crew on their senior thesis films. Spending time with them really helped me excel in the freshman film classes I was taking.

After my senior friends graduated, I stayed in touch and witnessed for the first time, how hard it can be to land your first job. Although I knew they were all capable of great things, without prior experience outside of college on their resume, it was hard to convince employers what they were capable of. Although I knew I was in a great film program, I learned that it’s not all about what you know- but how much experience you have.

Craving that experience, I knew I there was no time to waste. I started looking for and taking advantage of unpaid job offers within my community from people in need of video work. Even though they were unpaid, each experience was something that I could put on my resume, and help set me a part from other people my age. In addition to building a resume, the more opportunities you seize, the more people you meet who will think of you for future jobs offers, or be willing to give you great recommendations.

One of the opportunities I took advantage of was to produce a regionally broadcasted TV show for a local chef. A team of three of us that took on the project learned first hand, the real life application of what we’d been learning in school. However, instead of just handing in our projects to our teachers, we were also submitting our work to TV station that actually broadcasted our work every week! As it turned out, we even won a Telly Award for our broadcast! We now had achieved an honor that that many adults in the industry never achieve- all because we embraced new opportunities! With this experience on my resume, I was able to get myself interviews and internships with some of the best TV and film production companies. Through those experiences, I found out that even though I thought I wanted to go into film, I liked TV a whole lot better!

When graduation came around, I had already had three solid years working in the industry, had a giant resume, and was ready to face the world! Like all college graduates, I was applying for entry level positions, and offered a few opportunities to get my feet on the ground. Before accepting any offers, I came across an employment ad for a TV production company giving college graduates the opportunity to work as unpaid producers with a chance of landing a job as paid producers. I was faced with the choice of landing my first paid job right out of school at a skill level much lower than what I knew I was capable of, or taking advantage of one last opportunity to intern for no money, but really explore my potential and build an even stronger resume. I chose to be the big fish in the small pond, and surprisingly, it landed me a full time job- creating and producing TV shows just a few months out of college! Today, I am still happily employed by the same company and enjoy facing new challenges each and every day that I know would have taken me years to climb to, had I been afraid of taking advantage of learning opportunities!